Well, indeed, when I say “western countries” I mean the former western bloc of developed countries : Western Europe, The USA and Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I indeed don’t include Africa or Latin America. Precisely because my statement doesn’t necessarily apply there.
Not the same thing. Black women might be considered significantly less desirable as partners on average, but there are no lack of famous black models, for instance. There’s no antimony between “black” and “beautiful” while you’ll be hard pressed to find a fat woman presented as beautiful in mainstream medias, for instance.
Most certainly. But on this board that tends to switch more and more towards a politically correct attitude where only statements who are likely to be pleasant to read for minorities and women are acceptable, I don’t feel a strong need to do so. I think it’s much more necessary to remind people that desire, yes, even male desire, isn’t something one should be ashamed of. That there’s nothing wrong with valuing physical attractiveness. That trying to bury the objective fact that fat women aren’t considered desirable is just a totally “feel good” denial of reality. That judging someone on her work performance or her bank account is no less “objectifying” or superficial that judging her on her body. That supposedly progressive statements are in fact deeply rooted in a very old western conception of the body as ignoble and unimportant, and of sexuality as despicable and vile.
Like what for instance? Having an opportunity to feel superior by demeaning someone else? But that’s the purpose of any insult, and not specific to fat women. I don’t know what you’re hinting at.
If society and culture are telling us, from birth, that (for example) pale skin, straight hair, and thin bodies are sexually attractive, and other characteristics are not, then it’s likely that this will affect what characteristics people say they are attracted to as adults. If society and culture are indeed sending some signals about that, then it seems entirely reasonable and appropriate to critique these sorts of signals, if one feels they might be having a negative effect on mental health and happiness.
Well, yeah, and the sooner we’re in a world where women don’t give a fuck about how their looks are perceived, the better it will be. And good for the women who are already there.
But in the world we’re actually in, I think what I said makes perfect sense.
And still not sure what you think “objectively” means if not an adverb modifying the phrase that follows - “considered unattractive” - which can no other meaning than that such consideration is an objective measure.
But sure words mean what you say you meant not what they are. You say that means subjectively now. S’alright.
Let’s be clear. What “fat” means (quotation marks appropriate) is not clear. If what you meant was that morbid obesity is not subjectively found attractive by the vast majority of those in Western society, well that is certainly true. There have been few cultures in which morbid obesity was the standard of beauty.
But what is subjectively considered “fat” varies greatly. Current media beauty standards most often have an extremely low BMI as “the ideal” and some consider themselves “fat” and “unattractive” if they fail to meet that standard, even at normal BMIs or with athletic builds. Please note this happens in males too even if to some lesser extent - boys and men who strive for six-pack abs that can only be achieved at very low percents of body fat.
The desire to be seen as attractive, to potential mates, current mates, those perceived as competitors, is pretty natural. So is basing attraction, especially initial attraction, to some degree, on superficial physical characteristics.
I do think that both men and women though overweight unrealistic media images in self-assessments at least, and are not great judges of what others think of how they look.
This sidebar began after a comment that “[s]ome fat girl on the internet saying how body positive, and beautiful she is etc etc” is delusional. I do not think that the poster was restricting the comment to the morbidly obese.
The average American woman is at least overweight, by clinical BMI definition. Should that average American woman consider themself unattractive? Are they better off doing that? Or is having a healthy and positive body image and working on nutrition and exercise for health reasons rather than to meet some external beauty standard the better approach?
Again, established that the average American woman, overweight as she may be, especially one with a positive self-image, will find someone to whom they possess the exceptional characteristic of being beautiful.
By what metric are you using to determine there is “no lack of famous black models”. There is no lack of famous plus-sized models since they do in fact exist. But I don’t think you’d take their existence as evidence of anything.
Black models are underrepresented. Models with the skin tone and facial features typical of west and central Africans are very unrepresented. Either the prevailing look of super models tells us about the prevailing preferences of society or it doesn’t. Personally, I don’t think the prevailing look of super models tells us what what people are sexually or emotionally attracted to. I think it only indicates what “look” that society idealizes in a singular moment in time.
I am not taking about anyone being ashamed. But desire is just like any emotion. It is not immune to social programming. As any marketing major knows. From the moment a person is born, they hear “fat” being used as slur. Is this due to some biological aversion to fatness, or is it safe to assume that people are trained to see fat women as ugly the same way that whites were (and still are) trained to see black women as ugly?
Do I think every woman is beautiful? Hell no. This goes for black, fat, and any other kind of woman. But do I think guys who are especially vocal in their disdain for fat women are driven to do so by more than pure biology? Yes, I do. And I think there is a reason why Incels of all people engage in this obnoxiousness. They do it to compensate for their low social status.
Just curious if you think fat women in general are having a hard time finding significant others and mates. Because in my world, fat women aren’t sitting around talking about how no one is giving them any play. All the fat women I know have found a guy who thinks she’s hawt.
There is nothing wrong with valuing physical attractiveness. The problem comes when you generalize your preferences to everyone else and decide that means an entire group of people are “undesirable”, even when that is not borne out by evidence.
I disagree. Someone with lousy work performance is likely to be someone who is a lousy life partner.Someone who has more meat on her bones is just someone who likes to eat more than normal. Judging someone based on how rich they are can be a superficial judgment, but for a person who wants financial stability in their life, then it makes good sense to find a partner who can provide that.
It is both superficial and stupid to say a guy who doesn’t have a professional career (regardless of how wealthy he is or his other qualities) is unattractive. Can you agree with me it is equally both superficial and stupid to say a fat woman (regardless of her size and her other physical traits) is unattractive?
I am not hinting at anything.
Most black kids have either experienced or witnessed “skin color” bashing–someone getting picked on for being “too” dark. A lot of black guys of a certain age seem to go out of their way to hate on dark-skinned girls. Are they compelled to do this because dark skin is so objectively ugly that it must be denounced from the rooftops througj a bullhorn? If so, why don’t they do the same thing about acne, crooked teeth, small breasts or any of the hundreds of other ugly traits a person might have? Why does dark skin get picked on so obnoxiously, as if it automatically cancels out everything else about a girl’s looks?
It isn’t just guys trying to feel superior by demeaning others. It is also about guys stupidly confusing their desire for a status symbol for an innate biological response.
It does in fact modify “considered unattractive”, but I now see how my sentence could be misunderstood.
I meant that you can objectively observe that fat women are considered unattractive. Not that they’re considered unattractive, objectively so (my point in saying so was that even if the standards aren’t objective, they objectively exist, hence that pretending that they don’t, or acting as if they didn’t, is still delusional).
Ok, I agree that my sentence was unclear. but still, given that the statement as you understood it was contradicted by two of my points in the same post, I still think that you jumped to conclusion.
That’s why I wrote “mainstream” medias. Yes, there will be some overweight models, mostly presented to make a statement. And the fact that they can be considered beautiful will be strongly disputed by a lot of people. While black models will be hired because they’re generally perceived as beautiful, like all other models, and this will judgement will rarely be disputed.
Both statements are probably true, even though I don’t know if it’s factually correct. But underrepresented isn’t the same thing as not present at all, except when someone wants to make a statement. A random fashion designer organizing a random show will hire black models, even if you think that he won’t do so often enough. He won’t hire overweight models, on the other hand. And that would be because being black isn’t generally considered antithetic to beauty, while being overweight is considered so.
I won’t disagree with that. . “Beautiful” isn’t the same thing as “attractive”. That’s why I found the poll we’re talking about pointless when I saw it, in fact. Because by answering, the only thing I would have said would have been how high I was placing the bar for using of the word “beautiful”. Which is only interesting if you want to know something about my vocabulary use. While if the question had been “What percentage of women do you consider attractive?”, it would have been more meaningful.
That said, I think there’s a significant overlap between beauty and sexual attraction. Few men would be uninterested in having sex with a supermodel. Emotional attraction is a very different issue.
The second. That’s an obvious consequence of standard of beauty existing and not being universal. It clearly means that most physical characteristics people are attracted by are determined in large part by culture.
Yes, probably, or something similar. But anyway, why you are attracted to some types of people and why you feel the need to insult those you aren’t attracted to are two completely different issues. I’m not sure how this is relevant to anything I said.
Yes, I would tend to assume that they have a hard time. Now, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not necessarily convinced that your anecdotal observations reflect a statistical reality, either.
Maybe in your mind. But it’s extremely clear to me that in this debate, a lot of people insisted on how they valued other characteristics, and on how other people who don’t (contrarily to them, enlightened and feminist individuals) are bad people. Look : calling this “objectification of women” is a pretty big hint that this is supposed to be wrong.
And well…I think that it would be really disingenuous to pretend otherwise : a lot of people are accusing others of being “superficial” at best, “misogynist” at worse for valuing physical beauty. It’s very clear that in the mind of many valuing other characteristics makes you a better person. And I’m convinced that there’s a lot of “virtue signaling” at play too, here.
I’m certainly not generalizing my preferences to everyone else. Realizing one day how different people are, how different their perceptions are, and how they almost live in different worlds as a result, and finally how strong the tendency is to assume that everybody else thinks more or less like you and perceives things more or less like you, has been one of the biggest revelation of my life. So, I tend to suspect that I’m less likely to do so than most.
I don’t assume that people aren’t attracted to overweight women because I’m not attracted to overweight women, but because my observations lead me to believe that it’s the case. So, of course, I could be wrong about that. But then, if men are in fact as attracted to overweight women as they are to thin women, they hide it extremely well. Just some moments before starting answering, I was visiting erotic blogs on Deviant art. It’s pretty obvious what physical types had more reblogs. Why would it be the case if people weren’t, in fact, more attracted to these types?
Nevertheless, it seems that it is what you’re hinting at, tell me if I’m mistaken : men, aren’t, in fact, more attracted to some physical types than others. But they target these types because they’re bullies and it’s more acceptable to insult fat women than thin women. Is that your thought?
I’m not sure why you would expect that work ethics say so much about how valuable the person is as a partner. It’s not my experience at least. And even though I can see how some trait of personality could result in both lousy work ethics and undesirable trait in your partner it’s going to depend massively on what you value, once again. Being lazy doesn’t prevent from being, say, extremely warm and affectionate, and you might value this vastly more than paying bills on time. And of course, work performance can be detrimental too. You might not be happy that your partner is so invested in her job and is working 60 hours/week, for instance.
And regarding having more meat on her bones, it’s obviously a net negative if it’s important for you that your partner be thin and fit. Not taking that into account is once again assuming what you’re supposed to demonstrate : that valuing other characteristics is somehow superior to valuing physical characteristics. And anyway, even if you ignore that, you could also think that someone who is overweight lacks self-discipline, is unable to take care of herself, is lazy, etc… Not everybody thinks that “eating more than normal” is an unimportant personal preference. Some believe firmly that it demonstrates a personality flaw because for them, a well balanced person doesn’t overeat, and a sensible person takes great care of her body, given that they have only one.
For the record, I picked “work performance” because in my mind, judging people on their work performance is the epitome of what you’d call “objectification”. You’re judged purely on what you produce, like a machine, and if the figures aren’t good enough, you’re out (of course, I usually think of this in relation with the employer, not partner, but still it’s for me the perfect example of how a human being is judged like an object would be).
Yes, it makes complete sense. But as you say, it applies only if you value financial stability over other characteristics, and there’s no particular reason to do so. So, yes, people have their preferences in what they want in a partner, but it still doesn’t make “having money” objectively superior to “having great boobs”.
And here too I didn’t pick this example at random. For me, paying attention to this kind of things is the epitome of superficiality. I will have a tendency to judge very negatively anybody who consider “financial stability” as a significant factor in a partner. That would be because I can’t understand how it can possibly matter. I understand that one would prefer financial stability in the abstract, but while I see how being beautiful, or intelligent, or humorous, or a bazillion other characteristics could make someone more desirable, I really can’t understand how being or not financially stable could change your feelings towards a person. If say, you’re in love, you’re going to stop being in love because she doesn’t have a good job? How is that even possible? If you’re lusting after her, you’re going to stop lusting because she doesn’t make enough or even because she doesn’t have a job? Doesn’t compute. I can only understand it if you’re coldly calculating and not valuing feelings at all, which I find extremely undesirable in a partner. I’m sure people don’t see it that way, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me otherwise.
No, I can’t agree. A man who has a professional career is considered attractive, generally speaking. A woman who is overweight is considered unattractive, generally speaking. These are facts. You can say that both are arbitrary, and even that weight is even more arbitrary than having a professional career (because if your attraction is magically switched to “fat” instead of “thin” it will have strictly no consequences on your life, while if it’s magically switched to “unemployed people” rather than “successful professionals”, it will have some significant consequences), but these preferences being arbitrary doesn’t make them non existing, and doesn’t make them particularly stupid, either.
Regardless of what your standards are, they’ll be equally arbitrary. Maybe you want someone with a great sense of humor who makes you laugh? How is that less subjective, arbitrary and stupid than wanting a partner with a great body who makes you hard? Of course, being born in a different society, it’s the plump woman who would make you hard (and a different kind of jokes that would make you laugh), but how is it relevant since you weren’t born is this other society? It so happens that it’s the thin woman who makes you hard, and you arbitrarily value this more than her sense of humor, so you value the thin woman as a partner, and it’s not especially stupid. Not anymore than any other arbitrary preference, at least.
And I will repeat what i wrote already : regardless of what your standards are, some won’t meet them. If I value intelligence, then I will devalue women who aren’t that bright, and it’s not like they somehow deserved to have a low IQ, or that they somehow won’t resent being devalued. So, I’m not going to hurt feelings any less by proclaiming this preference. The only thing is that currently people are very worried about the hurt feelings of non attractive and/or fat women, but not the slightest bit bothered about the hurt feelings of women who aren’t smart. So, people proclaiming how smarts matter don’t feeling the slightest bit guilty while they think people proclaiming that all that matter is beauty should. Once again, I’m very serious about this. Think of it for a moment. Regardless how devalued fat women feel they are, at least there are people taking their plight seriously. But can you remember when was posted the last thread about the plight of people (not just women) who aren’t terribly gifted or who are poorly educated and how many post you have read recently that stated that it was ample time to think seriously about this issue? And in my opinion, the way our society, the left as well as the right, simply ignore and despise a large part of the population, albeit sometimes for different reason, is a vastly more serious problem than whether or not people should pay attention to not hurt the feeling of overweight women.
Does it? And anyway, once again :
There’s nothing objective to it.
Not finding a trait attractive isn’t the same thing as insulting people who have this trait. Even if the preference for light skinned girls isn’t biological, it doesn’t mean that these guys don’t really have this preference, or that they can do anything to change this preference. “Not biological” doesn’t mean : “I can change it if only I decide to change it”. If it were the case, cultural influence would be unimportant. But in any case, the reasons why they find it’s a good idea to insult dark skinned girls aren’t the same as the reasons why they prefer light skinned girls in the first place.
You seem to think that in fact there is no such thing as an actual attraction towards some traits. That they’re just pretending to be attracted to thin women, or to light skinned women, while in fact they aren’t, and it’s just a matter of having the “socially approved” mate purely as a matter of status. It seems to me to be a gigantic assumption on your part. You’re seriously suggest that the majority of people play a pretend game when they’re saying who they’re attracted to? I will repeat again : these preferences not having a biological basis doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, and not even that they aren’t compelling.
The problem is : given that pretty much all the standards we use to determine who we find attractive and who we find unattractive are essentially arbitrary, why would would you care so much about this particular one? As I wrote about a dozen times in this thread, do you think that if we were all valuing smarts instead, it wouldn’t have negative effects on a large number of women who don’t exhibit this trait?
You want to change the signals to replace them by what? If you replace "thin is beautiful by “fat is beautiful” (or any other physical characteristic) you just changed the category of people who are suffering from these negative effects. If you replace both by “physical appearance doesn’t matter, only intelligence (or any other mental characteristic) does”, again you only changed the category of people who are suffering from these negative effects.
Only by brainwashing people into having no preference at all and being equally attracted to everybody, you could solve the problem you’re mentioning. Or maybe by somehow making sure that society and culture doesn’t have any influence at all which would maybe result in people being attracted by completely random traits, but it doesn’t seem remotely possible.
I think so much of it is contextual that we’re not in a good position to talk about what it “might be like” to be paying attention to visual attractiveness as one component of how we react to a person, as if we were in a clinical laboratory scoured of all cultural contexts.
At the same time, because visual aspects of sexuality form a large part of our experiences in one form or another, it’s hard to not want to.
This post marks you as a sweet summer child, sorry. There are plenty of random fashion designers who refuse to hire black models. Or they may hire one and turn away all the others because they’re reached their “diversity” quota. Or they may hire the light-skinned biracial-looking women with bouncy hair, but turn away the women who are darker, with kinky hair.
Few guys would be uninterested in having sex with any woman who looks halfway decent. And quite a few would have sex with a woman who only looks a quarter decent. Just about every woman over a certain age has been propositioned by a guy, even when she was looking objectively awful. If you think the average guy would be so repulsed by Ashley Graham that he wouldn’t even consider her “fuckable”, then we simply aren’t operating in the same universe.
No, they aren’t separate issues. One perpetuates the other.
One explanation for this is that women let themselves go once they get married. That seems like a good explanation.
But then there’s this study, which found no statistical difference in the number of sexual partners reported by women with medium and high BMIs, but did find that women with low BMIs tend to have fewer sexual partners. Guess who has low BMIs? Super models!
The dating game is no doubt very difficult for the women with very high BMIs. But most fat women don’t have “very high” BMIs. A woman who is 30 or 40 lbs overweight, but has a charming personality and a beautiful face will be always be rated in appearance higher than the skinny woman with the skeletor face. I don’t care what society we’re talking about.
As long as we’re sharing opinions, I think it is stupid to insist that fat women are unattractive. I think it’s stupid to distill attractiveness down to a single variable, when it’s clear to me attractiveness is multivariate. If this makes me a “virtue signaler”, OK.
Since I see plenty of guys hooking up with and marrying overweight women, my experiences have led me to believe that more people are attracted to overweight women than what neckbeards on the internet (and I’m sure some of those neckbeards are really nice people) would have us believe.
It’s also been my experience that people talk a good game about what they like, but eventually, folks will settle with what they can get.
Because the folks who post to Deviant art inhabit the same society that esteems the pale-skinned, blonde-haired super model waif? I have no doubt in my mind that guys are attracted to this ideal form. But I also have no doubt in my mind that guys are attracted to many kinds of forms. It’s just not socially acceptable to pedestalize all all of those forms. When an erotic artist deviates from the society ideal in their artwork, guess what happens? They can look forward to being accused of “making a statement” or “virtue signaling”.
Men are indeed attracted to a certain arrangement of physical traits. The arrangement of traits they are attracted to may not match what they publicly admit to being attracted to, however. I have no idea how many guys have this dissonance. But I’m guessing a lot of the “fat women are ugly!” types that inhabit the internet are lying to themselves if they think their weiners wouldn’t get hard if they woke up next to this young lady.
Just like how a person might value their partner’s pretty face over being able to see their ribs? Or just like how a person might be able to overlook their partner’s double-chin in favor of their ample breasts and creamy thighs?
I would hope someone wouldn’t judge someone solely on their work performance, just like I would hope someone wouldn’t judge someone solely on their physical appearance–especially a single variable of physical appearance.
LOL. You haven’t produced any facts. These are assertions.
A guy with a professional career making $45K (what, you think all lawyers make six-figures?), living in his grandmother’s basement, weighing 430 lbs with a neckbeard, and smelling of BO and corn chips is not “considered” attractive. A fat woman with a beautiful face, a charming personality, luscious hair, a curvy body, a wonderful laugh, basic domestic skills, and a fashionable wardrobe is likely going to be “attractive enough” to get the average guy. Throw in a high-powered career and a good family name, and she might even score an high-status guy.
It would be crazy to call some rando guy “attractive” just because he has a “professional career”. And it would be crazy to assume the fat woman is “unattractive” just because she’s “fat”.
This has been real fun, but I’m going to call it a night. You’ve got some rather interesting ideas, I must say. But none of them have changed my mind about anything.
I’m curious as to what extent that study factored in childbirth, as that has a significant effect on women’s bodyshape and BMI (yes, I know - stay tuned while I teach my symposium on Egg-sucking for Grandmothers).
Not even that - I think if you want to find what Western people really want, look at their porn/adult modelling stars, not their models (whose looks are more driven by the tastes of fashionistas)
Well if we want to get all critical evaluation hatty about it then one also has to wonder if personality type or other characteristics and BMI have any correlations.
But dang a pretty amazing citation supported post there for monstro.
Here’s a question.
Which average young woman (and average in America is somewhat “overweight”) is more delusional?
The one who, as a result of being inundated with images of very low BMI models who are often photoshopped or otherwise altered, perceives herself as “fat” and “unattractive”?
Or the average build (again, “overweight” in America today) young woman who embraces the body they have with positivity and thinks of herself as “beautiful”?
Who of the two is likelier to be healthier, and consider each psychologic/emotional and physical health?
And to the ops that spawned this thread some related questions.
Which of their self-ratings is more likely closer to the ratings of others?
Is that going to vary by gender of the other?
I would argue that the average (overweight) young woman who self-assesses herself as unattractive is more delusional than the one who thinks of herself as beautiful, that the latter is highly likely healthier across various mental and physical health measures, is more likely to have a partner (or partners), and to have a self-assessment closer to the assessment of others. I do think that female others’ ratings will be more critical than male others’ ratings though.
I think few women believe they are beautiful in the complete absence of props and accessories. So I think the latter is more likely to think to herself “I am naturally cute. But I am beautiful when I am wearing outfit X and my face and hair is made-up in Y fashion. Cute is good enough for day-to-day life, though.”
The former is more likely to think, “I am naturally ugly. And I can only approximate ‘non-hideous’ when I am wearing outfit X and my face and hair is made up in Y fashion. Too bad non-hideous isn’t good enough.”
I think the former is delusional not only because she is likely devaluing her looks irrationally, but also because she is overvaluing the opinions of others. She is like the young woman who believes she must be ugly because her Insta selfie only got three likes rather than the hundreds that “other girls” get. “If I were really beautiful, there would me more Instagram models that look like me. Ergo, I must be hideous and unattractive. No one will ever date me. Kill me now.”
I agree. I think self-confidence comprises 80% of attractiveness. A healthy, happy person is also more likely to promote the undebateable positive features they do have. Like, the fat girl who digs how she looks is more likely to dress in a flattering way so folks can see her great gams and child-bearing hips. She is morely to get pedicures and manicures so she can sport the sexy sandles look and draw eyes to her dainty hands. She is more likely to have a sexy strut (see the last scene in “Real Women Have Curves”). All of those things go into the “attractiveness” package.
If there is one thing I learned from America’s Next Top Model it is that modeling is not just about having an appealing face or a “nice” body (however you define that). You can surpass both of these criteria and yet never be hired as a model. Models possess a shit load of body awareness. They know how to move and position themselves for the camera so that they and whatever it is they are selling looks good. A strange-looking woman who knows how to “work it” has a much better chance of being a model than the woman with the conventionally pretty face.
Naomi Campbell isn’t legendary because of her face and body. She is a legend because of her walk. She knows how to sell what she’s got.
For the vast majority of women endowed enough self-confidence, they can do the same thing.